I Have a Special Plan for This World

Pardon the unruly mess of this page. Once the WebWorks start appearing, we're going to clean this up as you copy-and-paste the resources here to their respective pages.

Several years ago, I was asked to present a screening for ACP 2003. The film I chose was Titus (Julie Taymor, 1999), and I was grateful for the chance to speak about it at far greater length than the brief introductions we have had in class.

For those interested, here is the text of my talk. It's a six-year-old piece that I left untouched. I'm pretty sure it needs revision and re-editing, but for now, here it is, serving as a time-capsule of those days when I could still call myself a "new(ish) teacher."

For a more sophisticated series of discussions of Titus, check out the following articles from various issues of Film/Literature Quarterly:

If, among other things, reflexive cinema foregrounds its own textuality, perhaps Barthes can help.

Martin Scorsese:

"I have always felt that Peeping Tom and 8½ say everything that can be said about film-making, about the process of dealing with film, the objectivity and subjectivity of it and the confusion between the two. 8½ captures the glamour and enjoyment of film-making, while Peeping Tom shows the aggression of it, how the camera violates… From studying them you can discover everything about people who make films, or at least people who express themselves through films."

"As a critic, I thought of myself as a film-maker. Today I still think of myself as a critic, and in a sense I am, more than ever before. Instead of writing criticism, I make a film, but the critical dimension is subsumed. I think of myself as an essayist, producing essays in novel form or novels in essay form: only instead of writing, I film them. Were the cinema to disappear, I would simply accept the inevitable and turn to television; were television to disappear, I would revert to pencil and paper. For there is a clear continuity between all forms of expression. It's all one."